Intel Enables ASTC Texture Compression In Mesa For Skylake

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Intel Enables ASTC Texture Compression In Mesa For Skylake

As of today in Mesa Git, the royalty-free Adaptive Scalable Texture Compression (ASTC) is now supported in Mesa Git for Skylake graphics hardware...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Intel-ASTC-Mesa-Skylake

[caligula]

Too bad these come so late. S3TC will expire already in two years. It will still take 6-24 months for the distros to adopt this.

[Daktyl198]

There's a lot of talk about "hope" that ASTC will replace S3TC, but does it even measure up in terms of quality? Close is okay, but generally not good enough especially for 8GB+ triple-A games.

caligula S3TC will expire in two years... at which point somebody somewhere will suddenly "remember" that they have patents used in it as well! and somehow keep it proprietary.

[liam]

There's a lot of talk about "hope" that ASTC will replace S3TC, but does it even measure up in terms of quality? Close is okay, but generally not good enough especially for 8GB+ triple-A games.

Guest S3TC will expire in two years... at which point somebody somewhere will suddenly "remember" that they have patents used in it as well! and somehow keep it proprietary.

It's not close, it's far better. The only other texture format that's closer is the newest pvr

[Daktyl198]

It's not close, it's far better. The only other texture format that's closer is the newest pvr

Then all is good in the world and I look forward to the day ASTC goes mainstream

[smitty3268]

Then all is good in the world and I look forward to the day ASTC goes mainstream

ASTC is being driven by mobile development and Android. It remains to be seen if it'll ever take off on the desktop. BPTC is probably what you'll see in AAA games, as it focuses on the high-end quality. ASTC's greatest strength is flexibility, allowing it to target really low bitrates in comparison.

[geearf]

Too bad these come so late. S3TC will expire already in two years. It will still take 6-24 months for the distros to adopt this.

if it is better, then it's never too late

[tajjada]

I love ASTC. It is a brilliant compression algorithm. I have experimented with it on some textures for a little game I am making in my free time ... too bad that so few drivers support it...

I am really looking forward to the time when it will be more mainstream and major games will begin using it. It is much better than S3TC in terms of quality and compression (and hence, performance as well (when the gpu hardware implements it), since the performance gain from compression comes from the smaller size --> less strain on the memory bus).

[swoorup]

Does hardware has to support ASTC to exploit its feature or could it be done at driver level?

[r1348]

Does hardware has to support ASTC to exploit its feature or could it be done at driver level?

I suppose it can be done at software level, and then send the uncompressed texture to the card, but you kinda lose the point in having compressed textures (saving PCI bandwidth) if you do that.